The Dangerous ‘Myth’ of Private Health

The private health industry is premised upon making money, and not on making people better. The private health industry does not care about the individuals that pay through the nose for medical treatment, but only about making monetary profit out of each ‘customer’ (note: not ‘patient’). This requires the creation and maintenance of a ruthless ‘risk assessment’ policy that deems the most ill people, (i.e. those ‘most’ in need of good medical treatment), as being the most ‘expensive’ to treat. In other words, those who genuinely need a compassionate and comprehensive health system, are termed ‘non-profit worthy’, and excluded from the private health system, through an indifferent bureaucratic procedure premised upon a ‘legal fiction’. The excuse is always the same ‘your monthly private health insurance premium does not cover the projected cost of the treatment you need’. What this actually means is ‘our profit margins will be threatened if we treated everyone inaccordance with their ‘actual’ medical needs’. Of course, when an entire workforce of a country contributes a regular tax-payment into a ‘not-for-profit’ government ‘national’ health scheme, all costs can be easily met, and delivered free at the point of use. The private health system cannot be sued should its employees make medically related ‘mistakes’ – as happens regularly in private hospitals. Furthermore, when mistakes are made by private hospitals, patients are usually transferred into NHS care to put the problem right. If the NHS is abolished, the idea of comprehensive healthcare will disappear into the greedy hands of the self-serving private medical providers, that are not held ‘legally’ accountable for the dire lack of service they provide, or the mistakes they make. When the NHS has gone, the weak, ill, vulnerable, elderly, very young and disabled will be excluded from private health insurance and so suffer terribly as a consequence. Also excluded will be the bulk of the working class who do not earn enough money to ‘quality’ for private health cover. This was a major issue of the 2015 General Election, and yet the Tories were re-elected. Will things be different in 2017?